Worth a Look 8.19.13

A growing phenomenon that cuts across denominational lines and impacts every level of ministry, pastoral abuse leaves in its wake thousands of wounded clergymen with ruined ministries, broken relationships, damaged health, even shattered faith.

‘The Bible Belt is collapsing,” says Russell Moore. Oddly, the incoming president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission doesn’t seem upset. In a recent visit to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Moore explains that he thinks the Bible Belt’s decline may be “bad for America, but it’s good for the church.”

Relevant Magazine online published an article, titled “Pro-life is More Than Anti-Abortion,” which makes serious accusations with no supporting evidence, that “the Church” has done no more than yell about abortion while abandoning women and children in need. The story is so common it is almost unworthy of response, but it does provide a good frame to highlight the reality of Christian responses to abortion in light of the wave of new regulations and abortion clinic closures.

Today, as Americans commemorate the war, it is worth remembering that merely calling it the Civil War disguises the fact that in this case, the victors did not write the history, for the victors had called it rebellion.